You might remember that, last May, Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh was announced as the director of The Magnificent Eleven, a modern remake of The Magnificent Seven that centers around a group of UK footballers (i.e. soccer players, which I pray doesn’t really require explanation) who rally around a Tandoori restaurant. We still don’t know that much about the picture, but at last there are some actors to associate with it: Sean Bean, Dougray Scott and Robert Vaughn have all been cast. Read More »

It would seem that Irvine Welsh rather likes his sporting movies. The author of Trainspotting is set to follow up his directorial debut, the darts mockumentary Good Arrows with the football-themed comedy The Magnificent Eleven. Here’s the official blurb for Eleven from Angry Badger Pictures:

A modernization of the classic western in which the Cowboys are a struggling local amateur soccer team, the Indians run a nearby Tandoori restaurant and the bandits are a group of menacing thugs led by a maniac known simply as ‘Blonde Bob’.

Welsh didn’t originate the script, though he is going to work on another draft with original writers Pete and John Adams. I wouldn’t be surprised to see his regular collaborator Dean Cavanaugh to come along too.

It’s been 11 years since Trainspotting burst onto the scene. Scottish writer Irvine Welsh’s sequel titled Porno was released five years back. So will Sunshine director Danny Boyle ever get around to making the movie?

“That’s the thing. We’ve been given the rights to do the sequel to it, and there is a script – a very early script from John Hodge, the writer of the first one. And we got the idea of doing it, but it depends on [the actors] being quite a bit older than they are at the moment. They need to have a bit of age,” admitted the director to IGN. “Our take on it is, their headiness – these guys who lived at the absolute brink, felt they were invincible and felt they could abuse themselves to the absolute limit – suddenly hit middle age. They’re in their forties and they look it – but they don’t really look it, those actors, yet. They’re a bit moisturised up and looked after. So when they get a bit older, we’ll have a go at sassing it up a bit, yeah.”

Porno follows the characters of Trainspotting nine years after the events of the earlier book, as their paths cross again in, this time the pornography business being the backdrop rather than heroin use. The novel is divided into 3 sections, each of which comprises chapters with different narrators. Unlike Trainspotting which had more narrational diversity, Porno is reduced to just 5 narrators: Sick Boy, Renton, Spud, Begbie and Nikki.